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Even if you aren’t in Australia, you can’t help but find the Australian Parliament the best reality TV show on the box anywhere.

The background: Our Leftie Labor Government was elected with a roughly equal tally of seats as the right leaning coalition, in late 2010. It was such a knife edge, one Labor seat was won by just 400 votes (Corangamite). There were five independents, who would normally be as important as the wallpaper in the House, but suddenly had supreme power. Our PM Julia Gillard did deals to remake the entire national economy with the one Green member of parliament, promising everything he wanted and more for his vote, even though he would rather walk on glass that vote “right”. (And some say she’s a good negotiator?) She won the support, with deals, platitudes, and pork barreling promises of three of the other four independents — two of whom who were representing rural, conservative electorates, so they did exactly what the members of their own seats didn’t want (those same voters voted very conservatively in the Senate). The whole schmozzle of our hung Parliament is balanced on a knife edge. If only one independent switches support from Labor [...]

Last week we finished some YouTube versions explaining the skeptical case. These grew out of the interview we did with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose for the ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind. They are what we would have said, if we’d been editing the documentary .

In the interview we were on a mission to show the evidence the ABC won’t show — and of course, true to form, the ABC did exactly that, and didn’t show it. As David often points out, the mainstream media have never shown this data anywhere in the world, ever, even though it is extremely relevant, from mankind’s best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, and is publicly available. Not to mention that billions of dollars of public policies depend on getting this right either.

This is a strictly no-budget approach to organize the message for those on the web who prefer to see video’s rather than read papers. Here are three YouTube’s by David Evans, thanks to Barry Corke (for the filming and editing). I hear that one I did will be ready sometime.

A little background. When the documentary interview happened in our kitchen, we noticed something interesting. We felt [...]

Bottom line: On Q&A Nick Minchin said the IPCC predictions were wrong. Matthew England said “Not true” their 1990 prediction was “very accurate”. But the IPCC predicted 0.3C per decade, and we got at most 0.18C per decade. (Forster and Rahmsdorf 2011 ) How is is “very accurate” when the result is below their lowest estimate?

[See our one-page version of this whole issue.]

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Oceanographer Matthew England owes Nick Minchin an apology. Will Tony Jones correct the record on Monday?

How strange is this debate where politicians know the science better than the “scientists”?

The ABC Q&A program shows they have no interest in pursing the truth on climate change. The panel was, as always designed to push an agenda. Five believers, with a sixth in the audience, faced two skeptics. No skeptical scientists were invited to attend, let alone sit in the front row with a mike, like England who was called in so the warmists could get the last word on the science without fear that a skeptic might disputing their version of events. We can’t allow people to damage the faith of those duped [...]

In response to the ABC doco I Can Change Your Mind, the believers of man-made global warming are out attacking with logical fallacies, cherry picking deceit, and the usual barking mad irrelevant lines about tobacco and AIDS. Desperate eh?

Never before in one day on one post have I enjoyed responding to Mr Unskeptical himself (John Cook), as well as Stefan Lewandowsky (aka Lysenko-strikes-again) and Clive-break-democracy-Hamilton.

John Cook on the ABC website.

Cook is from the University of Queensland, and he runs the ambush site “Skeptical Science” (where even the name of the site is misleading, and where he dutifully parrots the government scientists).

John Cook

His litany of logical errors continues:

He’s still resorting to namecalling with a term he can’t define scientifically. Which paper do we deny John? You’ve had two years to find it, and you still can’t come up with anything better than papers which cheat by changing color schemes, or which use wind-shear instead of thermometers to measure temperature? He’s clinging to that consensus, when evidence is what matters. The fallacy is known as argument from authority — but in science, authority is trumped by data. In contrast, I keep referring to 3,000 ocean [...]

How do you find the truth about some disputed point in science? You find the most authoritative source of information. The vital thing that makes science different to a religion is that there are no “Gods” of science. There is no expert who is infallible. The highest authority in science is the measurements and observations. Here is the hierarchy of authority in climate science:

This is what we have free speech for. This excellent video says it all.

Ponder as you watch: could you imagine a production like this coming from anywhere else but the Land of The Free? (Think Spain, Sweden or France? Weep, that the land of the Magna Carta was not the obvious source or even a likely contender. Could we really see this video coming out of Berlin or Beijing, or more to the point, Sussex, or Liverpool? The tragedy…)

Yes, this video is so good I’m posting it here even though every other libertarian, freedom loving, and just plain sane blogger will post it too and I hate being repetitive. Yes it’s that good.

H/t To Catallaxy, Bolt, and to SPPI

The creators FreeMarketAmerica.org are looking for donations.

God forbid that I should admire the largest most successful collection of free people on Earth.

For an example of modern government propaganda, wait til you see this: Your Carbon Price (No really, go spend 30 seconds there to try to guess what this production would have cost.)

I’ve never seen a website so slickly designed, so smooth to the point of oozing graphic designer dollars with every rollover. As I watched it, I was seeing our national productivity being buried under Gucci-layers-of-gloss-red-tape. It kept asking me private questions “your name” etc as if the spelling of “Jane”, “Joe” or “John” makes any difference to my carbon footprint (my name is Noneof Yourbusiness). Bring out the sick-bag as Dellers would say.

If regulators tie up the people in enough paper chains they eventually become as strong as steel bindings. “YourCarbonPrice” takes our money to tell us we might “earn” $2 – $5 dollars a week to help the country clean up polluters while we take cold showers, sell the second fridge, and smile with delight at being a “good citizen”. What more could we ask for? A George Orwell fridge magnet?

And watch the sycophantic supporters rush to slap their logo on the propaganda tool.

We are just 40 odd comments today from the 100,000th lucky commenter!!! Wait for it, we’ll be sending you on a world tour, a dinner for two, I might just post the Grand Winner both Skeptics Handbook I and II

Kerry Lutz

And for those who would like some weekend listening I did an interview with Kerry Lutz at the Financial Survival Network. (It’s 15 or 20 minutes). The overlap between skeptics of government science and skeptics of government money grows more obvious. We ranged through climategate to ad hominen arguements, the art of rhetoric, the regulating class, blaming “free markets” for the failures of unfree ones and spanish solar panels among other things. It was 11pm for me, somehow I could (mostly) string the words together.

PS: The comments counter is on the right hand column under “statistics”. (99,982…)

UPDATE: A Winner!

OK. Doing the numbers behind the scenes, it appears (!!!) Bob Malloy hit the big 100k, with Redc being mere seconds behind. So I’ll send books to both of you. Unless I’m wrong, I think Bob pipped redc for the title. (Gee Aye deserves an honorable mention for comment 99,999 and 100,002).

… there is a very public record of who has been lying to the public and who hasn’t – and it’s time to start using this information to make the liars and shirkers pay.

Let’s take a page from those Tennessee firemen we heard about a few times last year – the ones who stood idly by as houses burned to the ground because their owners had refused to pay a measly $75 fee.

We can apply this same logic to climate change.

We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.

They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?

Dear Steve,

I’ve got great news for you, all you have to do to avert a global catastrophe is [...]

Which caring environmentalists are trying to save the world through carbon credits? That would be the Banksters. Watch how the banks are working to “fix” the free market, via intervention and regulation, and milk the system to maximize profit. The so called capitalist pigs are really working in the style of the Soviets.

How sick is the EU carbon market? “It’s a dead man walking” according to Johaness Teyssen, chairman of EON.

The price of carbon hit record lows recently:

Carbon permits plunged to a record after European Union data showed emissions from factories and power stations in the region fell more than expected last year amid milder-than-normal weather.

EU carbon for December dropped 11 percent to close at 6.34 euros ($8.45) a ton, the biggest loss since April 28, 2006 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London. The previous low was 6.38 euros on Jan. 4. Power-industry emissions dropped to 2009 levels, said Matteo Mazzoni, an analyst for NE Nomisma Energia Srl in Bologna, Italy.

“That is the elephant in the room,” he said today by e- mail. “And then, of course, you have stagnating industrial production.”

Some people claim that I mislead people. But it seems they are the misled — not by me, but by their own heroes.

In the Skeptics Handbook I wrote:

“The greenhouse signature is missing If Greenhouse gases are warming the earth we are supposed to see the first signs of it in the patch of air 10 kilometers above the tropics. But this “hot spot” just isn’t there.

Weather balloons have scanned the global atmosphere but could find no sign of the predicted “hot-spot” warming pattern that greenhouse gases would leave.”

With all the benefits of hindsight, it stood up extremely well. (Damn, but I did do a good job )

There are claims I should not call it a “signature”, but here’s how it is: The top alarmist researchers called it a fingerprint or a signature, the graph explicitly states that the hot spot is the pattern caused by “well mixed greenhouse gases”, and basically, if [...]

What kind of organization receives all its funding from one source, then claims to be “independent?” (Yes, spot another GONGO idea).

The Conversation trumpets that it is “Independent” but it’s funded with $6 million from … the Government. As Tim Blair said “it’s a baby ABC“. (A Government organized “non government” organisation).

The Conversation gets 20,000 readers a day (apparently). According to the Alexa Stats, I single-handedly get about half the global traffic they do. They have an entire nation of university staff to help write stories. I’ve had ten guest authors and have written over 700 posts myself.

(If what they do costs $6 million, does that mean my site is worth $3m? Am I grossly underpaid, or are they grossly overpaid?)

This is another example of the self-growing-cycle of big-government. The site is dominated with stories that favor statist-big-government policies. They break laws of logic and reason, claim that experts are writing, but we non-experts working from home can point out the errors of those with professorships in our spare time, and with no PhD.

Consider the wit and wisdom of one Stefan Lewandowsky — who writes as a Professorial Fellow of a misnamed topic [...]

Clouds cover an enormous 65% of the planet and are responsible for about half of the sunlight that is reflected back out to space.[i] The effects of clouds are so strong that most of the differences between IPCC-favoured-models comes from the assumptions the models make about clouds. Cloud feedbacks are the “largest source of uncertainty”.[ii] Numerous studies show models project wildly different results for clouds, and yet few could correctly simulate clouds as recorded by satellites.[iii] One researcher described our understanding of cloud parameters as being “still in a fairly primitive state.” [iv]

Sunlight that travels 150 million kilometers can be blocked a mere 1km away from the Earth’s surface and reflected back to space. The situation is complicated though, because clouds also slow the outgoing radiation — which has a warming effect. In general lower clouds are thicker and have a large cooling effect, while higher clouds are thinner and tend to trap more heat than they reflect (i.e. net warming). Observations show the cooling effect of clouds dominates the warming effect. (Allen 2011[v]) which means that, in general, more clouds means more cooling.

Let’s be as generous as we can. The IPCC say feedbacks amplify CO2′s warming by a factor of about three.

Without the amplification from positive feedback there is no crisis

So being nice people, let’s assume it’s warmed since 1979 and assume that it was all due to carbon dioxide. If so, that means feedbacks are …. zero. There goes that prediction of 3.3ºC. Feedbacks are the name of the game. If carbon dioxide doesn’t trigger off powerful positive feedbacks, there was and is no crisis. Even James Hansen would agree — inasmuch as he himself said that CO2 would directly cause about 1.2ºC of warming if it doubled, without any feedbacks (Hansen 1984).

Consider the warming from1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites and not corrupted and adjusted land thermometers. Douglass and Christy (2008) point out that, given how much CO2 levels increased in that time, the warming only amounts to what the IPCC scientists predict we should get from CO2 alone, from the direct effect of CO2, and not from the effect of CO2 plus positive feedbacks.

The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends [...]